All posts tagged Phil Goff

Andrew Little started his leadership of Labour last year obviously a bit rough around the edges but showing promise as leading a new approach by Labour, hopefully on the way to recovery after a disastrous election – actually after three poor election results.

But something seems to have happened to Little during the summer break. He appears to have been sucked into the party machine and spat out as a strategy leading puppet.

This looks similar to the destruction of David Shearer as a new style leader.

Like Shearer Little looks uncomfortable in his role.

The Chinese surname strategy has gone down badly on the left. There’s been comments like ‘if Little keeps digging it won’t be long before he comes out in China and he can check out the speculators for himself”.

It’s difficult to know if Little is having trouble fitting into the role of leading, or if he’s struggling with a party strategist imposed role.

Senior Labour politician Phil Goff says he is giving deep and serious consideration to running for the Auckland mayoralty.

The veteran MP for Mt Roskill, who has served for 15 of his 31 years in Parliament as a cabinet minister in portfolios including foreign affairs, defence and housing, said today he had received approaches “from right across the community” to lead the SuperCity but had yet to make up his mind.

Like just about everyone Andrew Little has trouble taking one consistent stance on Iraq. NZ Herald report on his meeting with Tony Abbott:

Labour leader Andrew Little told Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott in their private meeting that Australia’s air strikes against Isis in Iraq make sense because the Iraqis were saying air strikes were making a difference.

So it makes sense to listen to what the Iraqis want regarding air strikes.

But he also told Mr Abbott that the plan for New Zealand and Australia to train Iraqi troops was an exercise in futility because it would be “propping up a corrupt and dysfunctional army”.

But it’s futile to listen to what Iraq wants regarding training their troops.

This sounds like cherry picking points of political convenience. And I wonder what Little’s stance on providing training assistance would be if he were in Government.

And John Key pointed out another contradiction.

Mr Little yesterday said a stable Middle East was in New Zealand’s interests but it was not going to be achieved with 16 trainers and 120 logistics and security personnel for two years. “It’s too small to make a difference.”

Mr Key said yesterday that the same parties who say New Zealand won’t make a difference in Iraq were the same ones that said New Zealand should make a stand against climate change “and when I say we’re only 0.14 per cent of world emissions, they say it doesn’t matter that we’re small”.

That’s the reality of politics – if you deal with many issues it becomes easy to find contradictory approaches (Key won’t be immune from this).

And especially it’s a reality of the Middle East. It’s such a complex situation, where becoming allies with prior enemies isn’t uncommon.

Firstly to you, Mr Goff. Labour’s opposition to military action here – what is it in a nutshell?

GOFF: In a nutshell, it’s because this is a high-risk venture that is probably the least effective thing that we could do to stop ISIS. I’m totally opposed to ISIS. I think there are some really effective things that we could do.
We could be providing humanitarian assistance. There are 13 million people in refugee camps in this region, not only from ISIS, but from some of the other regimes that are just as brutal.

What sort of systems are you talking about?

GOFF: Just keeping people alive, giving them healthcare, giving them food, giving them proper accommodation. The $35 million that we are spending on putting troops into Iraq so that we will have 16 trainers – that money could make a real difference in keeping people alive in those refugee camps.

Even humanitarian aid workers are at risk. You’re putting them at risk without any military support. We’ve seen them being beheaded.

GOFF: No,we’ve done this before. We provide our assistance through people on the ground from the region who deliver that aid.

It’s high risk to deploy our troops to help train the Iraqi army, but Goff downplays the risks faced by humanitarian workers, who are targeted as beheadable pawns by ISIS.

Nevertheless, you have lost this battle – hey are going – and your Labour counterparts in Canada, the UK, Australia have all backed their government in this. Why not Labour now? You know it’s going to happen.

GOFF: Because we believe in an independent foreign policy. We make our own judgement. John Key is making his own judgement.

An independent foreign policy doesn’t rule out doing what some other independent countries choose to do.

GOFF: We have made the hard decisions as a Labour government time and time again. I was part of the decision to send people into Afghanistan, to the Solomon Islands, to Timor.

Those were decisions where you had a clearly achievable objective. There was risk. We were prepared to take that risk, but we were going to achieve our objectives and we did. In this case, trying to do something with the Iraqi army with its 50,000 ghost soldiers, it’s ineffectual.

I’m sure those decisions weren’t independent of what other countries were doing. Trying to sort out Afghanistan was seen as futile – and it’s questionable whether ‘clearly achievable objectives’ have been achieved. Any improvements taken time and effort but there are still significant issues there.

There are animosities that have been entrenched and stirred up for millennia in the Middle east. It’s hard to see how anyone can win there.

And it’s difficult for politicians in New Zealand to take non-contradictory stances on what should be done.

I want to speak in support of the statement made to the House this afternoon by the Prime Minister. I want to acknowledge some of the contributions that have been made by party leaders as we have gone round the House, but also take issue with some of the points that have been made. Can I also, as Minister of Defence, thank those who have spoken in support of the individual soldiers who will be part of the contingent that deploys to Iraq.

I appreciate that, although the political sentiment may not lead to support, the individual support for those soldiers is very much appreciated. I thought the analysis of what the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)— Daesh, as it should more correctly be known—is, given by the Leader of the Opposition, was quite correct. I thought he did, in fact, sum up exactly what the problem is. This is a mercurial enemy, a Stateless enemy, an evil enemy that knows no bounds for where it would perpetrate its evil. It is arguable that it does not even find its moral authority inside the Koran, and there will be tens of millions of Muslims who agree with that. It is worth noting too that, although we get moved by the high-profile beheadings and other atrocities committed upon their high-profile hostages, there are thousands of Muslims who are receiving exactly the same treatment from this evil outfit. If there is a theme that has come through even from those who are opposed to this action, it is that the solution to the problems that we currently see and the threats that the world faces from this particular evil have to come from the Muslim world. I am encouraged that when we met Dr al-Jaafari, the Foreign Minister of Iraq, he stressed that point with us. In recent weeks I have met the Foreign Ministers and defence Ministers from a number of other countries in that part of the world and they have similarly have expressed that view. That, I think, is one of the most significant differences between this and any other interventions in that part of the world. We certainly respect that desire from those countries to lead the fight against this particular evil. When it comes to the suggestion that we should somehow be concentrating our efforts entirely on improving civil society in a country like Iraq it denies the fact that that is a country pinned down by the evil that it faces every day—a country that has not got a capacity to reach out to someone who is opposed to them and somehow come to a point where you could shake hands and move on. They are facing an evil. As Andrew Little so clearly pointed out, Daesh wants to set up a medieval-type arrangement across borders that have been respected for centuries. The only way forward is, firstly, to be able to tackle that particular evil, Daesh, with military action. Iraqis are prepared to do that, but they have said to us very clearly that where they can get help to assist with training their very large military force—some 40,000 soldiers—then they would accept that willingly. I note that every one of the civil interventions that have been raised as prospects this afternoon by the Labour and Green parties occurs outside the so-called wire: beyond a military camp, beyond a boundary that can be protected, just out there in the ether offering good advice to people about the best way to run things. Well, that lies completely counter to everything that Winston Peters had to offer and that Peter Dunne had to offer. There are times when evil simply has to be put down and this is one of those occasions. The suggestion was that we can contribute more if we help a country like Iraq diversify its economic base, particularly in agriculture. But when you have a country where its most fertile regions are beset by daily improvised explosive devise tragedies, kidnappings, and other just general lawlessness, then it will not matter how many field advisers with clipboards and UN hats we put in the field, there will be no change. There has to at some point be a Government that is supported to take control of its country and we observe that the arrangements that were in place from a Government perspective between those at the beginning of 2014 to now are quite different.

Reaching out across the sectarian differences and factions in that country is something that we should be supporting. This contribution from New Zealand is very well considered. The ridiculous suggestion from the Green Party that this was somehow a deal cooked up in another country and imposed upon us is just that—completely ridiculous. We did not make any commitment at any point, anywhere, until the Iraqi Foreign Minister sat in front of us and said: “We want your help.” No one should be surprised, though, by the reaction from the Labour Party and the Green Party. On the one hand they will stand up and they will say: “We should be supporting a United Nations resolution here, and if the United Nations is not telling us to go there, we should not be there.” Well, they are the two parties that defeated motions in this House to support United Nations Security Council motions in 1998 and then again in 2003. They want to have it both ways. On the one hand they say: “We will support the United Nations motions.”, but when it comes right to it, no, they do not do it. And what is worse, going back to 2003, and all this business about: “We have got to go to the House and get a mandate.”—well, where was the mandate for the intervention of 2003? Where was the House mandate for the 63 engineers who were sent to Iraq as part of the reconstruction in a war? There are some things about this whole involvement that give everybody cause for concern, but if anybody sits in this House and thinks that there is no threat on a daily basis to New Zealanders, they are seriously deluded. I will ask one question that I think everyone should reflect on: if we were to have New Zealanders or a New Zealander somewhere in the world grabbed by this outfit, put into the hostage block, and paraded in front of us, where would we go for help? Would we simply say: “Well look, don’t pick on us because we’re just civil advisers. We are just here to help with the agriculture.”? They will not make that decision, and New Zealanders are at risk just as much as anyone else in the world.

I think it speaks volumes for the decline of the Fairfax newspaper that, apparently, no one on the other side of the House read in this morning’s paper of the threats posed to New Zealand. This is not something that we can just walk away from—not something that we can turn a blind eye to—and, I am sorry, but simply saying that there are other ways of doing it does not face the reality of daily life in Iraq for a people who are doing their best to overcome the evil of Daesh.

Hon Member: What difference are they going to make?

People over there can say: “What difference does it make?”, yet I know that in other circumstances they will come in here and talk about how one person can make a difference, in all number of other cases. Well, what we are doing here is simply sticking our hand up and saying: “We want to get rid of this. We do not see it as being legitimate.” It is not about saying that there is a divide between the Western World and the Muslim world because, as I said before, the Muslim world is suffering from these people as much as anybody else is, if not significantly more. Our troops will go into this mission with the appropriate protections. We have said that we will make sure of that. They will make a contribution to the security of not only the future of the Iraqi Government, which is legitimately in place, but also to New Zealanders, who travel so much around the world, and we are making a statement about what we are prepared to tolerate on our own shores. This is not a huge intervention; it is a modest intervention. Our people have the expertise to make a difference, and we are very pleased to be supporting them in this endeavour.

Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour):

This is probably one of the most important debates that this House could have. Sending New Zealanders to war is a decision that should not be made lightly, and it should be seen to be made with broad political support. On 18 March 2003 the then Prime Minister Helen Clark initiated a debate on Iraq. President Bush had just issued his final ultimatum.

Diplomatic negotiations had failed, and to correct Mr Brownlee, Labour had supported the UN resolutions of 2003, including Resolution 1441. Helen Clark said at that time: “Our position on this crisis has at all times been based on our strong support for multilateralism, the rule of law, and upholding the authority of the Security Council.” We refused to join the “coalition of the willing” and we took a principled decision. It had integrity, and it was understood by our international friends. We were independent and we did not hide behind the club. On that same date in that same debate, Bill English, the then Leader of the Opposition, stood and his opening words were: “The National Party will be supporting the coalition of the willing.” National was wrong with that decision then, and it is wrong now. The intervention in Iraq, the National Party said at that time, was in the interests of global peace. That did not come to pass, Mr English. It said that the threat posed to the world would be removed if we went to Iraq. That did not come to pass. What we saw was over 10 years of fighting, training Iraqi soldiers, the spending of $25 billion of US money, and we did not remove the threat to the world. On 18 March 2003 the Labour Government allowed a vote in support for the position we had taken. National and ACT voted against the Labour Government. They voted against it and they voted in support of the “coalition of the willing”. John Key was part of that vote and he has never resiled from that position. In fact, he said that we missing in action in Iraq. Labour, New Zealand First, the Greens, United Future, and Progressive voted against sending troops to Iraq. So I say to the Prime Minister today: put the vote to the Parliament. Let Parliament decide. Show fortitude and ask the people’s representatives. All the parties are represented here—allow us to tell you what we think about the decision to send 143 personnel to Iraq. Show leadership, show courage, show statesmanship, and show moral leadership here in this Parliament. I would say that, once again, the vote would be from National and the one little lonely vote from ACT, who props ups this Government. Then I ask this: did the Prime Minister and his Cabinet allow his own caucus to vote on whether they should send troops to Iraq? The answer is no. Do you know when their caucus found out about this decision? After the Australians and after Baghdad—they found out at their caucus this morning. They were told this morning. Like cannon fodder, they just go along with the decision. The Labour Party is in favour of being a good international citizen. We have a track record. We have a highly regarded reputation on the international scene, built up over many years. In fact, it was that track record internationally and our reputation that got us on to the Security Council. We were seen to have independent thinking—it won us the support because our pitch was “peace and security” and we pitched it to the small nations. I say to the Government, and to Nick Smith who constantly interjects: what are we going to do differently now? What are we going to do differently under this Government, with what it is proposing? We are not doing anything different from what we promised the people who voted for us for the Security Council. In fact, we are going down the same old line the National Party has always gone down. John Key said that this is paying the price of being part of the club. Is that a good enough reason to commit our troops to Iraq, dressed up as trainers to train Iraqi soldiers that we have been trying to train for 10 years with no results?

Is it good enough to follow the lead of others and not have our own response? No, it is not. To set out other alternatives—where are the other alternatives? Do you know that the total contribution in humanitarian aid to Iraq is $13.5 million? That is less than we were going to spend on Skycity , or hosting America’s Cup—less than that, and that is what our humanitarian aid has been to Iraq. John Key gave New Zealanders a personal assurance during the election campaign that we would not be involved in sending troops to Iraq. That is 8 months ago, and, I have to say, 8 months ago we knew of the evil of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) . We knew what it was doing, how it was spreading its tentacles around the world. John Key made that promise to New Zealanders back then, 8 months ago. Over the months we have had the dance of the seven veils by the Prime Minister, as he slowly exposed what his real thinking is, softening us up, priming New Zealanders to send troops to Iraq. He said that he has been open with New Zealanders. If that is open with New Zealanders, I do not know what openness is. I believe we have been taken as fools by the Prime Minister. I believe Andrew Little when he said that this decision was made a long time ago. It would have been made at the little side-meetings the Prime Minister has with his club in the so-called coalition. It would have been made as they had little chats after the golf. It would have been made in different places, where we did not know what was going on but the nods and the winks were taking place. I think the announcement today has raised more questions than answers. The Prime Minister said that we are sending force protection for our troops. Who is the force protection? Where do they come from? How are they going to protect our troops? How many of them are there going to be? He said that the SAS are going to be going for only a short time. What is a “short time” for the SAS to go? They are going to go when there are high-profile visits, I suppose, of people parading around Iraq and Baghdad . He said that they are going to be behind the wire. Where is the wire? Where does the wire sit? How do we know if they are behind the wire? He then said it is going to be a 9-month deployment, then a review, and then a 2-year commitment. And then he went on to say, in the other breath, that New Zealand has got to be there for a long time. What are we going to be doing? Are we there for 9 months with a review, 2 years, 10 years? We did not get that answer. We believe that we ought to be part of rebuilding Iraq. We ought to be part of ensuring the things that we can do best. What does New Zealand do best? It is not sending 143 personnel to Iraq.

It is the things that we have strengths in. We do have strengths in rebuilding. We do have strengths in humanitarian aid. Why are we not sending humanitarian aid to Jordan where all the refugees are flooding and they are having to feed and house them? Why are we not providing that support? Why are we not providing support in terms of medical personnel for those who are wounded and hurt and need hospital assistance? Why are we not involved in rebuilding that country in the way that we have done in many other countries? But what do we get from this Government? We get that it is making a major contribution to its friends by sending 143 personnel to Iraq. We do not believe it is justified. We do not believe the case has been put. We do not believe that we will make an impact, but we could if we looked at other alternatives. The Government has been blind to other alternatives. It has not put the case.

Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green):

Today the Prime Minister has let this country down. He has prevaricated for 5 months, softening up the public, during which he has said various things to different people.

He has cheapened New Zealand by commercialising the issue of war and peace, pricing the item in terms of club membership. He has flouted our constitutional integrity, advising the world of the decision before advising the people of the country he purports to represent. He has displayed contempt of Parliament by refusing to allow a debate to be held before the decision or a non-binding vote on the question of war and peace. That compares with the United Kingdom, the source of our constitutional heritage, which called Parliament back under urgency not long ago to debate the use of force in Syria. In that case the Government respected a parliamentary majority not to send forces, even though that parliamentary view was non-binding. The military personnel will be sent to Iraq to do four things: to train the army, to protect the trainers, possibly act as spotters, and gather intelligence. As the Prime Minister’s list of things to do in Iraq has lengthened, it has become disingenuous to harp on about staying behind the wire. The wire has become a mockery—a hollow symbol of false reassurance. The wire will become something you step around as you exit the compound. It is an insult to the intelligence of the public. Nothing is more certain or at least inevitable than that Kiwi soldiers and the SAS will be moving around the Iraq countryside in due course. How could it be otherwise? How could New Zealand stay behind the wire, when other nations are not? We would look craven. The Prime Minister just advised that the SAS could be deployed for force protection and high-profile visits. How will they do that from behind the wire? The wire has become a conscious deception. It implies that the critical consideration is individual safety. It deliberately misses the point. In a conflict zone there is always personal risk. Safety issues are critically important, but they are an operational responsibility. The criterion for decision is not personal safety. It is the legality and the wisdom of the decision to deploy or not to deploy. It is not personal safety and the wire. It is an insult to send military people, in whatever capacity, in the garb of diplomats. Because the Government cannot determine the status and role of our troops in a 21st century conflict zone, it will give them diplomatic passports. How stunningly irresponsible. The Prime Minister’s notion of 21st century diplomacy is to send soldiers to train to kill. For 300 years the profession of diplomacy has been exclusively civilian—to negotiate and dialogue; reach consensus for passive settlement. It is the antithesis of violence. The job of soldiers is to fight and, if necessary, to kill. Military attaches in embassies have diplomatic passports because they operate as diplomats, not soldiers. Australia has done the same. It has already garbed its soldiers as diplomats. So it is clearly the hallmark of the lawbreakers’ club. Mr Abbott and Mr Key are betraying the history of centuries of international law and politics. The reasons given for sending the troops are threefold. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has emerged as a threat to the world, including New Zealand. It engages in unprecedented brutality. It proclaims a universal caliphate that threatens the national sovereignty of all countries. These reasons are valid for discussion, but they are contestable. They are not a sufficient argument for New Zealand to engage in Iraq militarily. ISIL is a threat to international peace, but not to our immediate national security. The situation requires New Zealand to make an input into the Security Council, but not necessarily to send troops. ISIL engages in brutality of a kind not seen in Europe since the Catholic Inquisition. But Saudi Arabia does the same. The challenge of ISIL requires economic and financial sanctions, including of member States supporting it. It then requires arrest and prosecution in The Hague of its leaders.

It does not require aerial bombing. With the passage of time, you can get to individuals without pulverising the countryside. The proclamation of a universal caliphate is as meaningful as the accreditation of the Holy See to the United Nations. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is a threat to peace, but its ideological excesses are the subject of dialogue not mutual killing. In Iraq, today’s problem is the child of yesterday’s mistake. ISIL is the current errant sibling of Al-Qaeda. Its rise is the direct result of the chaos that derived from the illegal invasion in 2003 by the law breakers club—the United States, Britain, and Australia. That disastrous decision by the club to proceed with the UN if possible, but without it if necessary, is the direct result of a strategic miscalculation to regard 9/11 as a matter of international security rather than international criminality. The invasion of Afghanistan to root out terrorism, to drain the swamp, has set the international community on a wrong course ever since. We are still paying the price today—morally, politically, legally. The decision to send troops is an illustration of how intelligent individuals can do collectively dumb things. I call on the Prime Minister to table a written paper by his Attorney-General, laying out the legal case for sending troops to Iraq with the bilateral request. We can then debate the legality of the decision and then its political wisdom. Just a few hours ago a news item reported Professor Stephen Hawking as saying that the one human failing he would most like to correct is aggression. It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, he said, but now it threatens to destroy us all. I remind the Prime Minister that before long, perhaps in 2017, aggression will be an individual leadership crime in international law. Cabinet members will be held accountable in our domestic courts and before the international criminal court. It is a salutary indication that future leaders, whether National or Labour or the Greens, will be taking these decisions with more seriousness and less impunity than they did in this one today.

RON MARK (NZ First):

In rising to take this call on behalf of New Zealand First, I want to start by talking about some people who have not even gained one mention from the Government to this point, and they are the defence force personnel who will be deploying, the defence force personnel who will lay their lives on the line to do what this Government has told them they must do. Let us be very clear, our defence force personnel will be just like typical Kiwis—soldiers, air force personnel, and sailors—the likes of whom we have come to know, love, and honour. They will be chomping at the bit to get to grips with this mission. That is their nature. That is the way we are. If either I or Darroch Ball were back in uniform again, I would say, without a doubt, should we have been asked to do this mission, that it would have been an emphatic “Yes, sir, when do we go?”. But it is not their job to determine whether or not this deployment is appropriate. That is the job of this Government. Ideally, it should have been the job of this Parliament. Ideally, this Government would have gone out of its way to consult with all political parties to get as wide a level of consensus behind our defence force personnel as was possible, so that might they deploy, and in the worst case not come home, they would know that the job and the duty that they performed had had the support of the majority of this House. This Government has instead chosen to embark on a misinformation campaign, a spin campaign, the like of which I cannot recall in this country’s history. Prior to the election it was politically inconvenient to have the question put; there was an assurance we were not going into combat.

During the election campaign there were more such assurances and in December we had the Minister of Defence denying that troops were undergoing training. Well, look at the facts as revealed here today. When New Zealand First said that there 130 to 140 personnel training and preparing to go, the Minister denied it. Today, we are told that 130 personnel are likely to go. When we said that the deployment was likely to occur and that decisions would be made in February or at the start of March, guess what? It is late February, and we are heading to March. When we said that there are troops going from the second and first battalion, from one battalion from Queen Alexandra’s Mounted Rifles, the Minister scoffed, made light of it and joked. What do we now know? The second and first battalion, one battalion and the Mounted Rifles are going. It begs the question: who knows more about defence than the Minister of Defence—clearly, everybody. And he made jokes about it. This is the Minister of Defence whose biggest whine and bitch was that he could not understand the acronyms and that the Defence Force really needed to stop using them because he could not understand. We need to think about these personnel and privates who are earning, what, $44,000 a year—$44,000 a year. There are second lieutenants who are likely to be platoon commanders—what are they on, $50,000 to $60,000 a year? We need to think about the large numbers of troops coming back from Afghanistan and other deployments who will be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and the trials and the rigours that they have gone through to try and get assistance and help. Think about that now, Government, Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, and Minister of Veterans’ Affairs, because one thing that I know from my past military experience—and Darroch Ball knows—is that as an army officer you certainly do not think about it when help is being asked for them. Think about what they are being paid and what they are being asked to do. Let us not give any more of this illusionary rhetoric and gloss about the safety of the mission. What do we know about Taji? We know that it was the centre and hub of death squad killings by al-Qaeda and that it still seems to be that way. We know that there is a mix of Shi’a and Sunni there and if that mix exists in the training base, there will be inherent risks of green on blue. We know that they are poorly paid in the Iraqi defence force and therefore—and Mark Mitchell knows this—they are open and subject to threats, bribery, and all of those other things that occur inside of corrupt organisations where you have the very wealthy and the very poor and disempowered. We know that these people, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), are very well trained, and we know that they study the responses of forces to ambushes and to other interdictions. We know that they go back to study the tactics and prepare for the next time, so that they know precisely what the drills of the battalion or of our soldiers might have been and that they know how to counter it. They know about secondary ambushes where they seek to make the biggest strike. We know that this mission is high risk. There is no behind the wire when you have defence force personnel who will take a bribe, who might find that their family has been threatened, and just leave the gate open, or shoot the guard to allow an entry to happen. All the rhetoric, all the chest-thumping, and all of the carry-on actually does our defence force personnel a disservice. They will go loyally where they are sent. They deserve to know that the majority of this House supports them and to know that this Government has done everything it can not to politick around the fringes, not to minimise the risk to the polls, not to avoid having to answer the horrible question at the most awkward of times. They deserve to know that our Government would have actually spent time with other political parties, gone through the issues and risks, and worked to garner wide consensus and support, and that did not happen. That saddens me greatly. We need to know about the training and activities that these people, our defence force personnel, are going to be involved in. We have heard a lot, but we have heard nothing. Are we training raw recruits? Are we training Iraqi special forces personnel? Are we training their officer cadets? Are we training them to be leaders? Are we training them not to be corrupt? Are we training them to look after their personnel? And precisely who is training us in how to train them—because we have not been there. Well, not quite. Actually, there have been a hell of a lot of New Zealanders in Iraq for the last 13 years.

Some of them are back home now. Some come and go; they go to other countries all over the world. In fact, if you look at what the Prime Minister has talked about today, you could have given this work to a contractor to do, a contractor that has the sanction of the club members, because those club members have many such companies engaged in this precise work, and we as a nation might well have chosen to focus instead on humanitarian aid like sending a Defence Force field hospital. Oops, sorry, I think we sold that, did we not? Yes, we probably sold that. Maybe, actually, if we had maintained the promise that the National Party gave to re-establish our air combat capability we might have been able to send that, but, oops, there goes another promise made by Simon Power and Don Brash, supported by half the people who sit in the front benches of this Government. Oops, just forgot that one. So we do not have those options, but while we are thinking about these personnel who are about to leave, let us think about the position that we put them in over Christmas, where they could not tell their mum and not tell their dad and not tell their grandparents or their uncles and aunties “Yes, I am going to Iraq.” They could not confide in the detail. Just think about that. Just think about the effect on those young people and those families. I know families who have spoken to me, under my guarantee that I would not mention their names, obviously. Families are, naturally, worried, as they should be. Our young men and women are ready to go and do the Government’s job, as we knew they would be, but I want this House to think carefully about the way it has treated Defence Force personnel. Look at what is happening in Linton. We are selling off defence houses that soldiers and their families live in, and throwing these very same soldiers from 1st Battalion and Queen Alexandra’s Mounted Rifles out into the free-market forces: “Oh, go fend for yourself. This country loves you so much we’re going to send you to Iraq and give you a medal, and, by the way, we’re taking your house off you and you’re going to be subject to some landlord ripping you off for rents that we know you can’t afford because you’re being paid only $44,000 a year. Don’t worry; we love you. We’re going to give you an operational deployment.” Well, now is the time—now is the time—for this Government to think seriously about some of the things that are happening inside the Defence Force, some of the things that it is not doing to support our Defence Force personnel. Do not sit there, beat your chests, and tell me how wonderful you are as a Government because you are taking on these nasty, brutal ISIS people, because the truth of the matter is that your focus as a Government should be on looking after our Defence Force personnel whom you are about to deploy into Iraq to do your job.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General):

I was disappointed in that snarky and, frankly, underwhelming contribution from Mr Mark. He is capable of better, and I think that on this important day the House deserves better because today the Prime Minister has announced that New Zealand military personnel will fulfil a non-combat, behind-the-wire mission to train Iraqi security services so that they are better prepared to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or, as Mr Brownlee calls them, Daesh, in their region. The Government has very, very carefully considered options to expand the New Zealand contribution to the coalition beyond the humanitarian assistance that we are already providing. Today’s announcement is in line with a fine New Zealand tradition of providing this sort of support where we can. As the Prime Minister has said, we have an obligation to support stability. We have an obligation to support the international rule of law. And it is exactly the same obligation that Helen Clark relied on when she sent 70 engineers to Iraq. It is, quite frankly, lazy thinking to believe that New Zealand sits in some kind of benign environment due to its distance to the Middle East. We do not. In a practical respect, of course, there are hundreds and thousands of New Zealanders who risk being directly affected by terrorism, but, more than this, New Zealand is a global citizen. We are not insulated from events in the rest of the world. I was interested to hear Mr Flavell talk about the three most peaceful nations on Earth: Denmark, Norway, and this country. Well, look at what has just happened in Denmark.

Just a few days ago Norway’s police security service advised that a terrorist attack is likely in the coming year. Who is immune? No one. As the Prime Minister has said, we cannot stand idly by while these extremists throw people off buildings because of their sexuality, burn people alive, rape and torture women, behead civilians, and turn children into killers. As a distinguished commentator said recently it is no mere collection of psychopaths and adventure seekers; it is a group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. It is simply not good enough for people like Kennedy Graham to say it is not our problem—of course it is our problem. The world has seen groups like Daesh emerge before, though not at the same speed and to the same extent, at least not in recent history. But there are too many examples from history for us not to have learnt that when others stand by and do nothing we pay the consequences later on. All of us have watched in horror at the rise of this death cult. It follows a perverted interpretation of Islam that labels anyone who disagrees with them as an infidel and inflicts extreme terror and violence on others. Just this afternoon we have seen videos of Kurdish fighters being paraded in cages throughout streets. It is extremely well funded, extremely well organised, and highly skilled at recruitment. It has been labelled the best-resourced terror organisation in recent history. It obtains its money through extortion, oil fields, looting, and smuggling. It has an active bureaucracy. It is attempting to function like a State. As of today Daesh controls territory in Iraq, Syria, and eastern Libya, an area similar in size to New Zealand. There are 8 million Iraqis and Syrians living in areas controlled by Daesh. Its self-declared goal is to form an Islamic State; to establish itself as a caliphate with absolute authority and power. We are all too acutely aware of the terror and the brutality that Daesh is inflicting on the people of Syria and Iraq. I remind Mrs King of the suffering of her constituents in the Assyrian community in Miramar as they learn what is happening to their relatives in Mosul. There is no argument that the actions of Daesh are to be condemned, but condemnation, I say to Mrs King, is easy; the question of action is a more difficult one. A range of opinions has been expressed in the House today about how New Zealand could contribute. What the Prime Minister has announced is very strong and sensible. Currently, 62 countries are part of an international coalition against Daesh. New Zealand will bring significant expertise to the training of Iraqi soldiers. Our reputation for this sort of work is very good, and with reason. We have heard the concern raised today that standing up to Daesh through a training mission increases the risk to New Zealand. But, quite frankly, it is naïve to think that the status quo guarantees our safety. We are—and rightly so—concerned about our safety. It is not an isolated threat. We are well aware—all of us in this House—about the attacks on Ottawa, Copenhagen, Paris, and Sydney. All of them were either directly or indirectly linked to or inspired by Daesh. There is no guarantee that New Zealand will stay off this list. It is not a matter of being alarmist; it is a matter of facing reality. The fight against this evil organisation will not be a straightforward one. It will be difficult and it will be dangerous.

But today’s announcement gets the required level of intervention right. Deploying a non-combat training mission to Iraq will help promote stability in the region, it will degrade Daesh’s strength, and will reduce the threat that it poses internationally. I say this to Kennedy Graham about his suggestion as to how we could help: quite frankly it is foolish; it would expose New Zealanders to a far greater risk of injury or death than what is being proposed now. Let me in closing remind the House of the well-known words of that fine, young, brave supermarket employee when giving his reasons for hiding Jewish customers during the recent terrorist attack on Paris. He said: “It’s not a question of Jews, or Christians, or Muslims. We’re all in the same boat and we have to help each other to get out of this crisis.” Exactly.

DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert):

The decision made today has meant that our troops will be going to Iraq, and I do not think there will be anyone in the Labour Party who does not wish them well, and hope and pray that they come back safely. In 2003 New Zealand was under extreme pressure, like today, to send troops to Iraq. We had the courage to say no. I do not believe there is a New Zealander around today who does not believe that that was the right decision to make. The National Party wanted to go. Here we are, 12 years later, and it is in Government and it is sending our troops into an infinitely more complex situation to do an even less exact and understood role in Iraq. This decision is one that we will regret. It was a decision that was made months ago by John Key when he was talking to his allies. It was a decision that we already knew about, if not just because we knew that the military had been training for all of that time. Since then we have had a huge number of justifications of why this is necessary, and some of those have been rehearsed out again today. Going to war is one of the most difficult decisions a Government can make. The acid test is, if there are going to be casualties, we can honestly look those families and the country in the eye and say that their lives were not lost in vain.

Our forces will be going to Iraq to make no appreciable difference to the situation there. Any assessment—and I know as well as anybody else—knows that is the case. So the only reason I can see for us being there is to be part of the club, as it is called. For me, that does not stack up as a sufficient and adequate reason. There is a time to stand by our allies but we should make that decision independently on the basis of the difference we can make and how effective we can be. Sending our people into harm’s way to be part of a club is not sufficient for that sacrifice. “It is about doing something.” this Government says. Doing something even if it is stupid—that is what it is all about. Our troops will not enter under any conventional status of forces agreement, under which we have always sent our forces away in the past. We will be carrying diplomatic passports. It is a shonky deal—a ruse—to get around the fact that the Iraqi Government is so divided that it would be unlikely to agree to a status of forces agreement. That gives you some idea of how universally appreciated our presence will be in Iraq. The troops they will be training are likely to be heavily infiltrated by radicals. We have just heard today that on Camp Taji itself there will only be 16—one six—specialised trainers available on that base. So you can imagine that after $25 billion of US investment, hundreds of US lives lost, and 10 years—10 years—of training, this is what we will contribute and we believe that risk is appropriate. And what will they seek to achieve? Well, hopefully a better equipped army. But we know that the Iraqis can shoot straight; that is not the issue. The problem is with the officers who have been withdrawn and plucked out of the Iraqi army and replaced by relatives and friends of those in power—the corruption; the militias who are now more in control than conventional forces. And how are we going to fix that? Quite simply, we are not. We have never been afraid to go into a conflict, but Iraq is a situation where we cannot make a difference, yet we subject our troops and New Zealanders in this country to increased risk from engagement. This will be a decision we regret.

Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):

There is no decision more serious for a Government to make than to commit its personnel to a war conflict zone where some may not return. Yet this decision is being made in the House today without a vote—without a vote because there is no majority in this House to support the deployment of troops to Iraq. In fact, if there was a conscience vote on the National side, there would be a minority in this House in favour of deployment, because that decision in the National caucus was not a unanimous one. Just 8 short months ago—8 short months ago—John Key issued this statement. It is headed: “No New Zealand Forces to Iraq”—“No New Zealand Forces to Iraq”. He said there would be no boots on the ground, not even in an advisory capacity. He said that New Zealand did not take these actions without a United Nations sanction. Every one of those comments made before the election represents a broken promise. The reason that we are going to Iraq is because after the election, when a little bit of pressure was put on by the Australians, the British, and the Americans, John Key courageously said: “I will deploy, but don’t tell New Zealanders. I need a length of time to soften them up. I need distance from this promise here, before the election, that we would not be doing it.” There is no doubt that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a brutal and a barbaric organisation, but, in that sense, it is not that much different from the regime in Syria of President al-Assad, who has slaughtered 100,000 of its people. It is not much different from the Shi’a and the Sunni militias who have committed crimes against humanity and committed war crimes. The one difference is this: ISIS sets outs out deliberately to publicise its actions to shock and to lure the United States and its friends deeper into committing military forces, and the Government needs to think about why it might be doing that and what the consequences might be. You see, this Government has not thought through the consequences of its actions. It did not when John Key and Bill English supported committing New Zealand troops to Iraq in 2003. They said we should be there, and any analysis of why ISIS has thrived—has thrived in Iraq—relates to the National Party’s support for an invasion, which failed in its objectives and actually made the situation much worse than it was. We are doing the wrong thing today for the wrong reason. It is for the wrong reason because we are doing it—as Mr Key said in one of his more honest moments—because we are part of the club. It is not like he told the press at yesterday’s press conference that this was the club of 62. Read the Key statement; it was nominated members of the club. It said who they were: the Western nations. And we are doing the wrong thing because when you put people’s lives at risk there must be achievable objectives. There must be achievable objectives otherwise the sacrifice that you might indulge in is going to be futile. And we know this. We know that of the 143 people we are putting in harm’s way, just 16 will be there to train—just 16 of 143. We know that in the last 10 years the Americans have put thousands and thousands of trainers into the Iraqi army.

They have spent $25 billion in arming and equipping that army to no effect. We know it will not succeed because that army is deeply corrupt, it is highly sectarian, it is incompetent, and it has no morale. There is no way that New Zealand can do for the Iraqi Army what it cannot and will not do for itself. We do not support sending the troops, but our thoughts and prayers will be with them for a safe return home.

Cabinet is expected to approve sending soldiers to help Iraqi forces fight the Islamic State group when it meets tomorrow.

A deployment would conclude months of increasingly bellicose rhetoric since the general election as John Key ramped up talk of New Zealand’s need to intervene.

Ok, New Zealand isn’t quite going to fix the Middle East. It would be a token deployment so we are seen to be contributing to a wider campaign against ISIS. That has risks alongside being seen to support the good fight.

Western meddling has mended little in the Middle east over the decades and centuries. It could often be just stiring up a hornet’s nest a bit more.

Politically this loks like it’s virtually been a done deal for months. Troops have been reported as being prepared for some time .’just in case’.

The Iraqi Foreign Minister visited last week to officially ask for help, but that will have involved lengthy preparation.

John Key has sounded like he’ll go down this path for months, But a lack of Parliamentary support could be awkward. National + ACT don’t have a majority. Peter Dunne is opposed. Labour should be on side with a move like this, but they express doubts.

And this is what Andrew Little was reported as saying in defence of Goff last month:

“He’s given me those assurances, I’m satisfied with that,” he said on Firstline this morning.

“He hasn’t given the report to anybody, he declined media interviews until the report was released at 10am yesterday, so I don’t know where they came from and I’m satisfied they didn’t come from Phil Goff.”

Goff had presumably have talked to Little about whether he had leaked or not and will have known that Little defended him. Emphasising now that “I didn’t lie about it, but I didn’t pretend that I didn’t make the comments” highlights the discreoancy between Goff’s and Little’s claims.

Goff has put Andrew Little in a very difficult position here. The time of year might reduce the spotlight but it’s not a good look for a new era for Labour’s caucus under Little’s leadership.

It also makes Inspector General Cheryl Gwyn letting Goff off look weak when he then appears to mislead with impunity.

When it was confirmed yesterday by goffs apology, i rolled my eyes. Just as I did when I saw he has a SST column. Little needs to do a Key and get Goff to state NOW that he is NOT standing at the next election.

IMO, Little saying nothing yesterday, to my knowledge, leaves open the strong suggestion that Little knew about the leak and it was part of a strategy.

So, PG, I deplore dishonesty in our leaders, and every elected MP imo is supposed to be a leader. It undermines our democracy and the trust people have in our systems.

If I were Little I would have announced yesterday that Mr Goff is gone.

And:

Unless Little intends carrying on the awful tradition of planned leaking that some of our pollies indulge in, this was a chance to put his foot down.

It is unfathomable that Goff didnt know exactly what the media would do, sack him, show you have a genuine standard.

Last month details of the Gwyn/SIS report were leaked to media the day before it could legally be publicised. Phil Goff was an obvious suspect but he was cleared by new Labour leader Andrew Little.

“He’s given me those assurances, I’m satisfied with that,” he said on Firstline this morning.

“He hasn’t given the report to anybody, he declined media interviews until the report was released at 10am yesterday, so I don’t know where they came from and I’m satisfied they didn’t come from Phil Goff.”

However it was later revealed that Goff had been the leaker, so either Goff lied to Little or Little lied to media. And Goff was unrepentant.

“What I did was perfectly appropriate, if the journalists decided to run information given to them in confidence then you should raise it with your colleagues,” Goff told Radio New Zealand at the time.

Goff had changed his stance by last week.

Goff signalled in an interview last week, that he had apologised .

“I beat the gun on the embargo. I shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

“I’ve apologised to the inspector-general. The ball is in her court [as to legal action]. I’ll take it on the chin, whatever her decision is. I haven’t tried to lie about it or mislead people on it.

“[I] shouldn’t have done it…I’ll accept any consequences.”

Today Inspector General Cheryl Gwyn said Goff’s leak was no appropriate.

“All witnesses, including Mr Goff, were subject to a confidentiality order of the inspector-general,” IGIS said in a statement.

“The order was made to ensure fairness and the integrity of the inquiry. The disclosure of the report by Mr Goff was in breach of the order.”

And Goff has ‘unreservedly’ apologised.

The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has accepted Labour MP Phil Goff’s “unreserved apology” for leaking a Security Intelligence Service report to media.

Mr Goff gave a verbal and written apology and Ms Gwyn says no further action will be taken.

And I guess my enthusiasm led me to make some more comment than I should have.

That downplays the fact that he breached a confidentiality agreement.

I gave information that was not going to damage anybody.

In his opinion. Is that Goff’s Law of Leak Justification?

Ah what happened in John Key’s office was that that was part of a smear campaign.

So when someone else does it they are smearing, when Goff does it he’s just a bit enthusiastic.

The sincerity of Goff’s apology looks very dubious. First he (or Little) lied about leaking. Then he was unrepentant. Then he “unreservedly apologised”, followed soon afterwards by making excuses and turning it into political point scoring.

Andrew Little has a bit of work to do to reform his caucus.He generally sounds sincere but he will be damaged by association and collaboration with leaks, lies and insincerity like this.

Little shouldn’t be satisfied with what has come from Goff on this both last month and today.

Labour MP Phil Goff will not face any sanctions for leaking the details of a report by the spy watchdog a day before it was publicly released.

Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Cheryl Gwyn said this morning she had accepted Mr Goff’s “full and unreserved” apology.

“The Inspector-General will not take the matter any further,” she said in a statement.

Mr Goff breached a confidentiality order last month by disclosing details about her report on the Security Intelligence Service’s release of information to blogger Cameron Slater.

Ms Gwyn said no classified information was disclosed, but Mr Goff’s leak led to premature media reporting on the content of the report, “to the detriment of other witnesses to the inquiry, particularly those adversely affected by the report”.

This looks like a warning slap over Goff’s knuckles and a warning that tolerance of political leaking has changed substantially. Goff has a record of leaking with impunity over the years.If he does it again it would deserve severe sanctions.

The Inspector-General would be taking steps to ensure greater clarity around release protocols for future reports, and had also written to media organisations to remind them of their obligations under the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Act.

“The Inspector-General has significant powers to inquire into sensitive matters, and make adverse findings which may have a material impact on individuals.

“The obligations around confidentiality are necessary to ensure natural justice and fairness. It is important these obligations are respected.”

And that looks like a strong warning to the press, who have been complicit in leaks probably since Gutenberg’s day.

The media have a responsibility to be fair in their reporting. They knowingly reported cherry picked aspects of a report they would have known was still confidential, in effect enabling Goff’s illegal misuse of the report.

The Inspector-General seems intent on enforcing compliance and has effectively warned Goff (and all MPs) plus the media.

If reports are leaked illegally in the future strong action will need to be taken against offenders or we will revert to impunity as usual.

It’s worth remembering Goff’s initial reaction to his leaking of the report:

“I gave an outline of some relevant points that I said cleared my integrity,” he told Radio New Zealand.

“What I did was perfectly appropriate. If the journalists decided to run information given to them in confidence, then you should raise it with your colleagues.”

Without apology he openly admitted leaking and tried to blame it all on the media.

Phil Goff’s first column in the Sunday Star Times is on the Middle East and what we are doing or may do about the conflicts there. Phil Goff: Arms not the answer is a good balanced debut.

New Zealand has rushed through legislation designed to counter any threat from Islamic State or from terrorism generally. One of the changes is to give government greater powers to stop people travelling overseas to fight for Islamic State.

Generally I support that. We should try to stop any New Zealander joining an organisation that is routinely committing crimes against humanity. But it is important that we don’t go further in restricting the rights of New Zealanders to fight for causes that are legitimate.

Supporting restrictions but with some reservations and warnings is a sensible position for a senior opposition MP who when leader was involved in security briefings.

The new surveillance laws also must not be used in a way that unfairly targets the Muslim community. People I know in that community are already telling me they are suffering abuse from others because they are wrongly associated with Islamic State.

Sound security without resorting to unfair targeting and witch hunts is important.

The low threat of terrorism here is not because of the anti-terrorist laws but because we are largely a harmonious and inclusive society. That deprives terrorist groups of a recruiting ground.

The nature of New Zealand Society is our best defence.

The Government is also planning to send 40 to 100 soldiers to help train the Iraqi army to fight against Islamic State.

I don’t support that.

Fair enough. I don’t know enough about the pros and cons to make a judgement.

But risk and sacrifice can only be justified when there is a good reason, a clear and achievable objective and an exit strategy.

Unfortunately those providing humanitarian aid in the Middle East can do so at great risk too.

We shouldn’t do nothing, especially with threats like Islamic State, but we also shouldn’t become involved in unwinnable conflicts nor should we provoke unnecessarily.

We can play a more constructive role. We are now on the UN Security Council. We should be pushing for international efforts to starve Islamic State of combatants, weaponry and funding. Rather than military support, we would achieve more by providing greater humanitarian aid to help the millions of refugees in the region.

I’m sure those things will be considered. Our seat on the UN Security Council is in part thanks to Goff and David Shearer and Helen Clark. Our foreign policy has been and should be as much as possible a cross party effort.

When we announced last week that Judith Collins would be writing a column for the Sunday Star-Times, it excited comment across the broadcast and digital media.

1) Love her or hate her, Judith Collins is without doubt one of the most uncompromising, no-holds-barred personalities in New Zealand.

We think it’s time to respect our readers’ intelligence and let them make up their own minds on what she has to say for herself.

2) This is not new and shocking. Indeed, there is plenty of healthy precedent for senior MPs writing columns for the country’s big papers – among them, David Lange, Simon Upton, Deborah Coddington, John Tamihere, Jim Anderton and George Hawkins.

3) Finally, for those who believe commissioning Judith Collins was an outrage, I have more bad news … as foreshadowed, I’ve taken on a second MP, too. Phil Goff will go toe-to-toe with Collins in the Sunday Star-Times every week. Goff, once the leader of the Labour Party, has now been moved off new leader Andrew Little’s front benches. Like Judith Collins, he is freed of the constraints of collective responsibility – both of them can call it like they see it. If that means they sometimes criticise their own leaders, so be it. This weekend, the former foreign affairs minister will examine whether Kiwis should be allowed to go take up arms in foreign wars like those in Syria and Iraq.

David Farrar posted on this, saying that after Collins’ first column was published “The outrage on Twitter was hilarious.” It was.

And on this announcement he said “This is hilarious as many on the left regard Goff as a right wing sell out. I look forward to more howls of outrage.”

And sure enough the far left aren’t happy, or still aren’t happy (are they ever?)

What – Two right wingers having a column in a Sunday paper. You would have thought that they would have gone for someone from the left for balance but why break the habits of a lifetime.

And I checked out one who spluttered the most on Twitter, Giovanni Tiso. But he seems to have taken offence at me posting Giovanni Tiso et al versus Judith Collins a few days ago, when I tried to view his Twitter account I got “You are blocked from following @gtiso and viewing @gtiso’s Tweets.”

Many on the hard left are intolerant of different opinions and especially of criticism. Tiso would probably shut down most of the media and most of the Internet if he could. He tries – after the Collins column last weekend he started a campaign against the Sunday Star Times.

He might have fancied his own chances of being a left enough balance, but having tried to organise a subscription cancelling campaign against the SST I doubt he would be considered favourably. They are unlikely to pander to the perpetually pissed off.

I doubt whether Tiso and others will be happy until and the government conform to their ideals. Which will be never.